We've all had a good laugh about Anthony Weiner using his Twitter account to show the world that white Congressmen can have surprisingly decent-sized cocks. And we here at Deadspin have gotten a great deal of mileage out of men who, in fit of passion, decided to take pictures of their dicks and send them out into the ether, like digital herpes.

But we've never seriously delved into precisely WHY guys do this. It's easy to leap to the basic explanations of arrogance and stupidity when it comes to dong shots. But there's more to it than that. There are men who are NOT rich and powerful who take dong shots. There are men who are rich and powerful who choose to restrain themselves. It's not enough to just say, "Oh, he was a big shot and he thought he could get away it." That kind of misses the point, and the point is that men can get very, very, very horny. A deep, primal kind of horniness that only makes sense when you're in the middle of it.

When I was a kid, I remember seeing some lady in the neighborhood who I thought was very attractive. And so I constantly fantasized about showing up one day at her door pantsless, and then having her say something way hot like, "Guess you're not such a little boy anymore after all," and then inviting me in to recreate the stairway scene from Risky Business. I never did go through this, but it doesn't mean I didn't think about it, ruminate over it, play it over in my head again and again until the outcome felt like a real possibility.

That's what happens when you're super fucking horny. You set aside reason entirely. It makes no sense to send a picture of your dick to someone when you're not horny. What are you, nuts? Who would ever do such a thing? That's just asking for trouble. But when you ARE horny, well now that's a whole other mindset. You know in the back of your mind that exposing yourself to someone is a rotten idea, and that it almost certainly won't cause the desired result. But, if your dick is hard enough, you WILL believe that there is at least a small chance that exposing yourself WILL work, that it will cause the recipient to spray butter out of her crotch and engage you in a sexual encounter so fulfilling your dick might blow apart as a result.

That's why Weiner tweeted his dick. It wasn't him saying to himself, "God, I'm such a big shot Congressman! Look at what I can get away with!" It was the fact that he had a concrete banana bulging through his briefs, and that made him feel way hot. And when you feel really fucking hot, you want to see if you can make other people feel hot, too. Because if you can, and if you can connect with them, then the resulting sex is usually pretty damn mindblowing. Even if it's a long shot, maybe it's worth it. Maybe it's worth risking it all for that gold medal spank bank moment. Hell, even if your advances are rejected, there's still a thrill to be had in that moment of anticipation for their reply, of picturing in your head the girl seeing you and getting off on it. You still got to build a fantasy out of it. Sometimes the idea of that is more of a turn-on than the actual act itself. That's how we men roll. We use every part of the wet dream. Nothing goes to waste.

Being horny means feeling a little bit superpowerful. Ever get so horny you think you can lift a fucking truck over your head? I remember a reader named Ian wrote into the funbag once with this letter:

Have you ever had a big veiny one going and thought to yourself "I have the biggest cock on planet Earth"? Even being at the national average I do this all the time.

And the reason you do it all the time is because you're so adrenalized by your libido that it really does feel that way. You feel like you could fuck through walls when you get to that point, and it kind of feels good, frankly.

Any guy who's ever had a boner knows there's a tunnel vision you acquire once you're determined to bust your nut. It's like a junkie looking for heroin. Nothing else matters. I have done ridiculous things in the name of getting off – dry humping door frames, calling phone sex numbers using my parents' home phone, fucking fresh fruit – shit no one would ever do while in a rational state of mind. But you don't give a shit about decorum when you're horny. More important, it feels GREAT to not give a shit. It feels great to cast aside all the little polite boundaries you make for yourself to indulge your sexual appetite. It's why people fuck in public. It's why people make lots of loudass noises when I'm staying in the hotel room next to them (assholes). It's why Arnold boned the help. There's a freedom in ignoring social mores and just being a disgusting sex animal for a few moments. It's why I'm writing this post wearing nothing but a pink apron. SEXY.

I asked a few guys I knew if they ever took a picture of their own dicks. Most said no. Daulerio said he'd done it as a joke once, but no one said they had done it while in the throes of sexual passion. The extremely wise Matt Ufford, who knows more about sex than I do because he has it more often, said this:

"Now that we don't have to go to CVS to get photos developed, people are taking the photos they've always wanted to take."

And that's the key point. A lot of people take photos of their dicks now because they CAN, because they've always had that primal urge. We're fascinated with our own bodies. I know I am. I stare at scabs when I get them. I press my face against the mirror and check out the pores in my nose. And whenever I take a leak or go to jack off, I stare down my dick like a suspicious man on an airplane. "Well, look at that. That's my penis. And it's attached and everything! LOOK AT THE HAIR!" Kids play around with their bits all the time. Little baby boys grab their dicks and stretch them until you're terrified they'll pull the things clean off. They don't do this because they're horny. They do it because they're curious. And that curiosity never leaves us; we just put up a better front for it. Sometimes, I'll pull my dick or I'll cuff my nuts like a balloon until the scrotum's all shiny and shit. Just because. Your body parts are interesting because they're all you have: your eyes and hands and legs and genitals. Everything you think and everything you do is going to be performed by these things, and so it's always wise to examine them constantly and check to make sure they're in working order.

And sometimes, you want to know if someone else out there finds your body as fascinating as you do. Because it would be pretty cool if they did. And you want to see if people see your parts in the exact same way that you do. That's part of why you might take a photo of dick. You might say to yourself, "Goddamn, my dick looks hard! I wonder if it looks just as hard on camera." Take that innate curiosity, mix it with fierce horniness, and BOOM! Tweeted dong shot. This isn't to excuse Weiner, who's a fucking idiot and should be able to curb himself given his profile. It's just an idea of what would make him decide to take that last, fateful step of mistakenly sending out his package to the free world. Because I bet he didn't feel shame or remorse or regret while in the act. I bet he felt pretty fucking great.